Malicious Ads slip past Google

All the Fire Fox fans, please be careful with downloading the latest browser version. An ad on Google actually directs you to firefox.mozilla-now.com, a site that tries to get users to pay $2.50/month for an ongoing support.

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser born from Netscape Communicator Suite. Firefox has 22.98% usage share of web browsers as of August 2009, making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide after Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which stands at 66.97% share.

Courier – Microsoft’s ‘Secret Tablet’ Photo’s Leaked

Gizmodo a tech blog got its hands on what it believes is the secret new tablet computer being developed by Microsoft. This 7 inch new tablet PC has two screens, opens like a book and is designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus. Courier is believed to be in a "late prototype" stage of development. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet.

Check out the article and initial video of the device.

Sharjah Power Outage - Summary

Summary of the Sharjah Power Outages past 1 month.

(Attached is the map highlighting the areas most impacted by the outages in RED)

14 Aug 09 –15 Sep 09 – Intermittent power failures across Sharjah, leading to complete blackout on a number of days.

- Electricity failures continued for few days and no satisfactory explanation from Sewa officials increased doubts on the recovery from the outage. News papers reported that Sewa helpline would not answer calls or were not able to give appropriate clarification to the residents.

- Business Losses - 5-7 million/day as per an economist (Gulf news 14th September 09)

Few quotes from the Sewa officials in the local news papers,

- A senior Sewa official said that the power cut was caused by a problem with one of the main generators, and that the first phase of emergency plan was being implemented – Khaleejtimes 20th Aug 09

- According to Essa Al Zarouni, Director of Control Section at Sewa, the power outage occurred because the electricity supplied was more than capacity- Khaleejtimes 20th Aug 09

- A senior official at the Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (Sewa) said the power outage occurred due to an overload at one of the generators at the main power plant- Gulf News 27th Aug 09

Points to note -

• Street lights continue to be switched on as early as 06:00 in the morning


• No compensation plan for companies who incurred losses


• Sewa management has till date not disclosed the exact reason for these intermittent outages, but has accepted that the authorities were not able to keep up with the development across the emirate.

The power situation has considerably improved over the past few days as reported in today's newspaper

Dubai Metro Halted

News – Dubai Metro has been halted, rumour is that one of the passengers on the train pressed the emergency. Due to this all the stations are shut until further notice. The Rashidiya station was jam packed a while ago…

Another rumor is that it was a signal failure due to which the trains were halted and all the stations were shut. It took more than 3 hours for the passengers traveling to and fro from Nakheel Harbour to the Airport station.

Nevertheless, Dubai Metro is certainly an achievement and will definitely contribute to the development of the emirate.

Girl Who Silenced the UN for 5 Minutes

Guys,

Awesome video! The speech was given by Severen Suzuki representing ECO at Rio De Janerio in 1992 highlighting environmental issues that we continue to face now. We really need to clean up our act, and help save the planet. Selfish and greedy people continue to exploit the planet even though the world leaders were made aware of the environmental problems 17 years ago.

To honour the video lets celebrate UAE Earth Hour - on 30 September 2009.

Calling all the UAEens to switch off lights at home on 30 Sep 09. What say ?

Reviewing the September '08 Credit Crises

It was almost a year ago when, Lehman Brothers, one of world’s most trustworthy investment bank collapsed. This led to global financial panic, crashing of stock markets, housing crises failure of major investment houses etc. The series of event took place last September spreading panic world wide among bankers and destabilizing the financial system. When the dust had settled most of the world markets were down and big power houses were competing for government fund support.


While the crisis was on its peak in the West, the UAE governments were confident enough to pass this phase. UAE is also feeling the tremors of the crises, but the waves took a while to reach the Middle East.

The world governments have been predicting an optimistic forecast, whilst the world was in recession since October 2007. The world leaders failed to recognize the same which has led to the current crises.

The job is still not done, as the finance ministers of G20 nations meet to discuss “exit strategies”.